With hay season in mind, I would like to take this opportunity to share some thoughts on a very special tractor – as well as a very unique piece of haying equipment – my 1952 Allis-Chalmers WD tractor and our 1949 Allis-Chalmers Roto-Baler round hay baler.

My papaw, Paul “Pete” McNew, and his dad traded in an Allis-Chalmers CA and a Case tractor to purchase the WD from Neil Supply Company, Kingsport, Tennessee, in 1953. The dealership had held this tractor over from 1952 as they had used it for field demonstrations.

These demos were important to allow farmers to check out some of the features of the machinery and see, for example, how it would handle a plow in the soil conditions we have in this area. I recall Papaw telling me how he tested the WD by disking a huge field that is now a very busy thoroughfare in Kingsport with car dealerships, restaurants and other businesses.

Somewhere along the way, my great uncle Wood McNew (one of Papaw’s brothers) decided to give the WD a new paint job. Growing up, I always thought it was a WD-45 because when my uncle painted it, he used WD-45 decals just because that’s what he had. The WD was used regularly on our farm up until the early 1990s when Papaw suffered his first heart attack.

The starter had gone bad on the tractor, so the only way to start it was with the hand crank and magneto ignition or to roll and pull-start it, which was too hard on him after his health problems. Since he couldn’t do much of anything else, Papaw decided to give the WD a shiny new coat of Allis-Chalmers (AC) Persian orange paint (doing all the painting with spray cans – he was a very patient man).

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This time, he was able to use the correct decals. There were some other things besides the starter that needed attention when he painted it, but he didn’t want to go to the trouble. A couple of years before he passed away, Papaw gave me the WD, and I have since addressed all the issues that had needed repaired so many years before.

The Allis-Chalmers WD, built from 1948 to 1953 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, had several features that made it desirable to have on the farm. The “two-clutch power control system” utilized a foot clutch that would stop ground travel and the power takeoff (PTO), as well as a hand clutch that would stop the motion of the tractor but would still allow the PTO to continue running the combine, corn picker or Roto-Baler – whatever it may have been using at the time.

With its 30 or so horsepower, power-adjust rear wheels, belt pulley and available auxiliary hydraulics, it was ideal for almost any job around the farm and allowed it to be done more safely and efficiently.

Early farm equipment manufacturers were very business savvy. Some of them produced implements that would only mount on their tractors. Allis-Chalmers was one of those companies. The two-point lift system utilized on these tractors is very unique and allowed one person to more safely hook and unhook implements.

It incorporates the use of two lift arms and a snap coupler under the belly of the tractor to raise and lower some mounted implements. There was also another bracket underneath, instead of the coupler, which was used for mowing machines, etc. The drawbar could be quickly snapped into the coupler and then by placing two pins, you were ready to hook up and pull something.

The control lever is conveniently mounted right in front of the steering wheel in a quadrant on the left, and the throttle control lever is a quadrant on the right. It would have been very costly and time-consuming for farmers to adapt different brands of implements to work on tractors for which they weren’t intended, but many made a valiant attempt.

It’s obvious when you come across an abandoned piece of machinery that has an array of welding and signs of alternative engineering that somebody really wanted to make it work for him. The companies knew this would force people to buy their tractors and implements together, but in the 1960s, this philosophy changed with the standardization and switch to the three-point hitch systems we still know today.

Allis-Chalmers was the first company to manufacture a machine that would pick up windrowed hay from the ground, roll it into a bale, wrap string around it and eject it onto the ground. This was a major selling point to farmers, as it would save time and labor. The bales were 36 inches long, 14 to 22 inches in diameter, weighing 40 to 100 pounds and tied with standard binder twine.

When the bale reached the preset diameter, the pick up automatically stopped while the bale was being tied and it was then ejected. One major drawback to all this was the forward motion of the tractor had to stop while the baler kept running in order to tie the bale; thank goodness for the hand clutch.

Some later model Roto-Balers were equipped with a conveyor that would feed hay back out over the pick-up to allow the tractor to keep moving forward while bales were tied. These balers could also be equipped with a mounted AC power unit to run the baler.

The fact that round bales could shed water if left outside was a huge advantage over square bales. Even though Allis-Chalmers made a mounted bale loader, some farmers chose to leave the round bales in the field and just turn their cows into the hay when needed. All these things made this Allis-Chalmers duo very popular in their “hay day,” and I’m proud to call the WD mine.  end mark

PHOTO: Allis-Chalmers was the first company to manufacture a machine that would pick up windrowed hay from the ground, roll it into a bale, wrap string around it and eject it onto the ground. Photo by Lance Phillips.